Changes in Latitude

I'm in West Palm Beach this week on vacation. Blogging will be light, the Bacardi cold, and the water warm.

Pissing Away America's Promise: Cap and Trade Passes 219-212

ON CSPAN.com (not link yet)

HOUSE PASSES ENERGY BILL, 219-212 Today

The House has approved passage of the American Clean Energy & Security Act by a vote of 219 to 212. The climate change bill, a legislative priority of Pres. Obama's, centers on a renewable electricity standard, and a cap-and-trade policy aimed at reducing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. The Senate is likely to take up the legislation after the July 4th recess.

Never have so few done so much to so many for so little.

Amazon Closes Associates Program in North Carolina Over Tax Concerns

Via email this morning, another classic case of tax-and-spend Democrats costing American jobs through short-sighted greed.

We are writing from the Amazon Associates Program to notify you that your Associates account has been closed as of June 26, 2009. This is a direct result of the unconstitutional tax collection scheme expected to be passed any day now by the North Carolina state legislature (the General Assembly) and signed by the governor. As a result, we will no longer pay any referral fees for customers referred to Amazon.com or Endless.com after June 26. We were forced to take this unfortunate action in anticipation of actual enactment because of uncertainties surrounding the legislation's effective date.

Please be assured that all qualifying referral fees earned prior to June 26, 2009 will be processed and paid in full in accordance with our regular referral fee schedule. Based on your account closure date of June 26, 2009, any final payments will be paid by September 1, 2009.

In the event that North Carolina repeals this tax collection scheme, we would certainly be happy to re-open our Associates program to North Carolina residents.

The North Carolina General Assembly’s website is http://www.ncleg.net/, and additional information may be obtained from the Performance Marketing Alliance at http://www.performancemarketingalliance.com/.

We have enjoyed working with you and other North Carolina-based participants in the Amazon Associates Program, and wish you all the best in your future.

Best Regards,
The Amazon Associates Team

I don't personally know of anyone who used the Associates program as anything other than an alternative source of income, but the fact remains that it was taxable income, and now it's nothing.

NC Democrats have acted rashly, attempting to use the Associates program as an "in" to tax Amazon's corporate profits. They were hoping for a big payday.

Now they—and we—get nothing.

Alleged Moonwalking Pedophile Dies; World Forgets Obama Won't Use The Insurance Plan He Intends to Force Down Our Throats

Pardon me for keeping some perspective.

Democrat Donors Shut Down Atlanta Tea Party

The land of the free?

Update: The Simons don't care for other groups either, though earlier this year their response was to shut down the mall. (h/t Andrew H.)

SC Gov Mark Sanford Preps for 2012...

... by burnishing his "foreign affairs" experience.

Anti-Gun Harold Koh Headed for Confirmation Vote

From Foreign Policy:

A cloture vote on the nomination of Harold Koh will be held this morning at 11 a.m. ET, The Cable has learned. Koh, the dean of Yale Law School, was tapped to become the State Department's legal advisor nearly four months ago, but has faced criticism from conservatives for an alleged "transnational" approach to the law.

According to reporter Dave Wiegel of the Washington Independent, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said through a spokesman that he is confident he has the 60 votes needed to overcome conservative opposition to Koh's nomination.

Koh is a self-described "trans-nationalist" radical who believes in global gun control.

Koh's positions treat our constitutional law as if it were a mere local ordinance on the greater world stage. This is of particular concern to gun owners at a time when the U.S. Congress is under pressure from President Obama to ratify an international gun control treaty with countries in the western hemisphere. That treaty, known by its Spanish acronym CIFTA, would likely serve as a forerunner to a more extensive United Nations initiative, the "Program of Action to Prevent, Combat and Eradicate the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in all its Aspects."

The Bush administration, under the leadership of UN Ambassador John Bolton, rejected the small arms treaty. Bolton plainly told the world that the United States will not accept a gun control document that violates our Constitutional right to bear arms. Harold Koh commented that Bolton was being "needlessly provocative."

In a paper entitled "A world drowning in guns," Koh maintains that a civil society cannot exist with broad gun ownership: "Guns kill civil society," he said.

Given President Obama's track record of participating in schemes to undermine Second Amendment scholarship, and his disdain for those "bitter clingers" who believe in the Constitution, it is unsurprising that Koh would be nominated to the position at the State Department.

What is surprising is that Senators that desire to retain their seats would consider confirming such a radical so hostile to basic Constitutional rights.

Call your Senator this morning and express your disdain, while you still have a chance.

Democrats and Their Lobbyists Pack Pork into Cap-and-Trade in Backroom Deals

Not content with passing the multi-generational financial rape—AKA, stimulus bill—that was flush with economy-crippling pork projects that have actually damaged the economy, House Democrats are presently attempting to rush through their global warming hysteria-fueled cap and trade energy bill H.R. 2454.

The bill, which will provide a profit to a handful of heavily Democratic states at the expense of the rest of the country measured in hundreds of millions of dollars a year, has now come under fire for growing an additional 300 pages in the proverbial dead of night:

So, where along the line does the bill suddenly expand by 300 pages? According to the New York Times, the various committee chairs held behind the scenes meetings and hashed out a compromise with no allowance for public input. (What lobbyists were involved in those meetings?) And now we are expecting a Friday vote on a bill that has had no public hearing in a committee with jurisdiction over it and that is not yet available in the main engine of public disclosure, THOMAS.

This raises serious questions about how we expect Congress to disclose their activities to the public. Is a bill posted to the House Rules Committee and not THOMAS truly publicly available? While the bill may be available for 72 hours prior to consideration, the public does not have reasonable access to it. Nor does the public know how the final details were reached.

And that isn't even the worst part. This, apparently, isn't even the final bill. The final bill will be a manager's amendment that will be drafted later this week! From a posting on the House Rules Committee, we know that the deadline to submit amendments is Thursday at 9:30am. And there is talk that this will be voted on on Friday. Thus, the final version of this bill will likely only be available for less than 24 hours.

As we all know, the $787 billion dollar "stimulus" bill has been an utter failure. Unemployment is higher now than the projections estimated they would have been if the government had done nothing at all.

The Democratic pipe-dream of cap and trade will do nothing to impact the overall global climate while simultaneously increasing the cost of energy for all Americans and wrecking the economy.

Democratic politicians will get richer, their lobbyists will get richer, and the rest of us will get poorer.

How many hundreds millions are you willing to spend on a lie? How much deeper in an economic depression are you will to fall because of destructive pipe dreams?

It's time to contact your Representatives folks, and demand they stop ruining your lives to chase fantasies based upon junk science and nonexistent viable alternative energy sources.

Empty and Green

Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives, urged on by President Barack Obama, announced progress on Tuesday toward quick passage of legislation to fight global warming by reducing industrial emissions of carbon dioxide.

At a midday White House press conference, Obama said the "historic" climate change bill moving through the House would "transform the way we produce and use energy in America."

With incentives to encourage utilities, manufacturers and other companies to switch from higher-polluting oil and coal to cleaner energy alternatives, Obama said the legislation would spark a "transformation that will reduce our dependence on foreign oil and confront the carbon pollution that threatens our planet."

God bless 'em, the President and his cute little Global Cooling Global Warming Climate Change believers mean well.

He honestly and wholly believes with the sincerity of a child that carbon—the building block of life—is a Very Bad Thing.

The undeniable fact that dear old Gaia herself has pumped out far higher amounts of carbon into the air than we presently see, without any long-term ill effects, is something of an inconvenient truth. Of course, the entire history of the global climate freakout movement over the past 40 years is based upon inconvenient truths, half-truths, and hysterical ignorance being used to stir up irrational fears.

Here are some hard truths for the President.

The earth has been far, far hotter than it currently is. We had nothing to do with that one way or the other, and the Earth did just fine in moderating itself without bloviating bipeds passing empty resolutions.

The earth has also been far, far cooler than it currently is. We had nothing to do with that one way or the other, and the Earth did just fine in moderating itself without shivering, bloviating bipeds passing prevaricating laws as if they were of significance.

The fact of the matter is that there is nothing in Mr. Obama's background to convince us he have any idea what he is talking about on this matter. We don't know if he's had so much as a basic college science course, much less anything of more substance.

But I'm open to being convinced h are on the right path, if he can answer a few basic questions.

For starters, I'd like for him to explain when the last time was the planet wasn't changing. When he finishes, perhaps he can also explain why—for the very first time—the constant change is suddenly bad.

I suspect we know the answer. Obama is about changing others, finding ways to control and alter their lives. That's how he and his cronies can justify pushing for the dismantling of proven energy technologies that power this country (and directly and indirectly, tens of millions of jobs) in favor of more costly and unproven technologies that they claim are better for the environment.

But it's a pretty bold claim, considering none of the "clean energy" sources you support can economically provide enough energy to support a moderately sized town, much a city, metropolitan region, state, or an entire nation. Frankly, it's preposterous.

He's asking us to believe that something in his unknown and unexplored academic past can provide answers to questions that have baffled green energy proponents for years.

Pardon my if I don't buy the empty hype.

Update: Powerline has a state-by-state map that show just how much pointless environmental zealotry is going to cost you, and it isn't pretty. For those of us here in North Carolina, it's going to cost us $241 million in 2012 alone.

The Left Coast states—California, Washington and Oregon—actually make money off the deal, while New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Vermont profit on the East Coast.

The rest of the country—and the country's overall economy— gets screwed.

Our Athletic President

No matter the sport, no matter the venue, he always finds a way to punt.

Iranian "Moderate" Mousavi Belongs in Gitmo

Via Hot Air comes the news that the "moderate" Iranian opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi is the Butcher of Beirut, responsible for the terrorist attack on the U.S. Marine Corps barracks that killed 241 servicemen.

I said it before, and I'll say it again:

No matter who eventually prevails, the Iranian government will still continue their drive to build nuclear weapons. They will still fund terrorists. They will still train terrorists in their country to kill civilians in Israel. They will still train terrorists to kill American soldiers in Iraq.

What I didn't know at the time is that the Iranian opposition leader already had gallons of U.S. blood on his hands, and is by any rational measure is a terrorist.

Please tell me once again why which despot they put in power really matters to me... or you.

Presumably, They Pay This Guy

If we needed to point out the failures of today's educational system, we don't need to look much further than historically ignorant reporter Josh Krahshaar:

Florida Senate candidate Marco Rubio is the latest to make his own curious comparison drawn from the Iranian demonstrations — that the protesters would have more success if they had a constitutional right to bear arms.

"I have a feeling the situation in Iran would be a little different if they had a 2nd amendment like ours," Rubio tweeted on Sunday.

Not sure if Rubio was advocating an armed uprising from the otherwise peaceful protesters, but his follow-up tweet was a bit more dovish: "Hoping police and military in Iran will refuse to attack unarmed civilians if ordered to do so."

God forbid! Citizens should never use arms to revolt against a tyrannical government that is trying to suppress their natural rights.

Why, its unAmerican.

Location. Location. Location.

I think that most people would think that this production still of the new Ruger SR-556 is a very nice photo.

I personally feel that this one is slightly more appealing.

Freedom's Just Another Word For Nothin' Left to Lose

I noted in my previous post that the Iranian protester called Neda who had her shooting death captured in vivid detail should not be celebrated as a martyr for liberty and freedom. She is instead a martyr for a lesser evil, but an evil and repressive regime all the same.

Via Michelle Malkin's BuzzWorthy links this morning I came across the Founding Bloggers revelation of some very disturbing passages from the opposition that indicate my reaction was probably correct. Mousavi is advocating "'a reformation that returns us to the pure principles of the Islamic Revolution." Protestors in Iran call for freedom in their desperation, but they only ask for the freedom to celebrate a different despotism.

Someone please tell me why the brand of the Islamic Revolution that kept Americans hostage for 444 days is preferable to Ahmadinejad's special brand of crazy.

Neda: A Lesser Evil is Still Evil

It seems like the talk of the blogosphere today is the death of an Iranian protestor, apparently gunned down with a shot to the heart by a Basij militiaman. It appears she is being prepared for martyrdom by the media for having her death captured on video [warning: graphic]:

She has been tentatively identified as Neda Agha Soltan, a 27-year-old philosophy student.

Perhaps Neda will become the symbolic martyr that Iranian opposition desires, but I'd caution the western media and my peers in the blogosphere. She is not a martyr for liberty and freedom. Neda is a martyr for a lesser evil.

No matter who eventually prevails, the Iranian government will still continue their drive to build nuclear weapons. They will still fund terrorists. They will still train terrorists in their country to kill civilians in Israel. They will still train terrorists to kill American soldiers in Iraq.

I'll say a prayer tonight for Neda and the other Iranians who were killed today, but pardon me if I refuse to fall into the trap of projecting my values onto a culture that all too often cheers when Americans die.

Obama's Conditional Respect for Fatherhood

Barack Obama will speak about the "importance of fatherhood" today.

I can only assume he means conditional fatherhood.

After all it's difficult to square his support of infanticide and the idea of mistaken babies that are, after all, just a punishment, with the responsibilities of being a father through good times and bad.

PeaGate

There are many, many legitimate news stories that need to be written criticizing the arrogance, missteps, and outright lies of the Obama Administration, but Matt Drudge's attempt to drum up "PeaGate"—insinuating that Michelle Obama faked her White House garden, is really reaching...

... and more than just a little incompetent.

You'll note that there are two links in the photo, the first goes to the press release about the March 20th planting of the garden,and the second links to the press release about the June 16 harvest.

That's 88 days... well within normal boundaries for many plants grown as early-season vegetables, including those mention in the harvest press release.

Peas? They can be ready in 60 days. Lettuce? Looseleaf, butterhead, and romaine, range between 40-75 days.

It took maybe 20 seconds on Google to look that up. That's 20 seconds that could have saved Drudge from making a complete ass out of himself.

North Carolina Legislature Poised to Kill Amazon Associates Program

This was in my inbox this morning. If you are part of the Amazon Associates program in North Carolina, you won't be for long, thanks to the insatiable greed of tax-and-spend Democrats.

We regret to inform you that the North Carolina state legislature (the General Assembly) appears ready to enact an unconstitutional tax collection scheme that would leave Amazon.com little choice but to end its relationships with North Carolina-based Associates. You are receiving this e-mail because our records indicate that you are an Amazon Associate and resident of North Carolina.

Please note that this is not an immediate termination notice and you are still a valued participant in the Associates Program. All referral fees earned on qualified traffic will continue to be paid as planned.

But because the new law is drafted to go into effect once enacted – which could happen in the next two weeks – we will have to terminate the participation of all North Carolina residents in the Amazon Associates program on or before that same day. After the termination day, we will no longer pay any referral fees for customers referred to Amazon.com or Endless.com nor will we accept new applications for the Associates program from North Carolina residents.

The unfortunate consequences of this legislation on North Carolina residents like you were explained in detail to key senators and representatives in Raleigh, including the leadership of the Senate, House, and both chambers’ finance committees. Other states, including Maryland, Minnesota, and Tennessee, considered nearly identical schemes, but rejected these proposals largely because of the adverse impact on their states’ residents.

The North Carolina General Assembly’s website is http://www.ncleg.net/, and additional information may be obtained from the Performance Marketing Alliance at http://www.performancemarketingalliance.com/.

We thank you for being part of the Amazon Associates program, and we will apprise you of the General Assembly’s action on this matter.

Sincerely,
Amazon.com

Collusion

The Drudge Report posted earlier today that ABC News will be producing a broadcast for the Obama Administration's socialized health care plan from within the White House. Predictably, that has caused my peers in the blogosphere some consternation.

Bloggers on the left find that the idea of a Democratic Administration getting a prime time infomercial to extol the virtues of a controversial policy prescription that they are championing quite appealing. The broadcast features only those questions screened by the network, and is designed to provide the Administration a format devoid of rebuttals from libertarian, conservative, and moderate politicians who may have other and perhaps more sustainable ideas. Such unchallenged propaganda is understandably accepted with bliss among the conformist left.

Many of us on the center-right, however, find the increasingly incestuous relationship between the media and a President very alarming. Some are going so far to suggest that such a relationship a significant threat to our Republic. The reason for such concern is simple: a media so enthralled with a politician (or group of politicians) has cannot perform the watchdog role that is required of it in a free nation.

Fundraising for the Permanent Campaign

Kim Priestap of Wizbang is no doubt one of millions that got the following email from "President Barack Obama" this morning, begging for money to campaign for his destructive health care reform.

The email is replicated below, with the "To:" line filtered out.

The "donate" links in the page are to the following page on democrats.org, the web site of the Democratic National Committee:

http://www.democrats.org/page/m2/4052b1ac/5fe40d6/5a3a28bc/74b97e3f/1316167425/VEsH/

That link redirects to the following page on barackobama.com, another project of the Democratic National Committee:

https://donate.barackobama.com/page/contribute/dnc08ObamaHealthCare?returnlink=false&source=20090616_BO_HC_DNC_ND

So the email purports to come from the President, and redirects to a web site that bears his name and campaign imagery in order to collect money on a (presumably) secure server... so how can they put the following disclaimer on their fundraising?

This communication is not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

Is this legal and ethical?

Brits Debut "Stab-Proof" Knives

According to the industrial designer who created them, he did so because saw a documentary where British doctors advocated a ban on traditional kitchen knives because they had the potential to be used as stabbing weapons in crime.

Seriously.

I have no idea if the design of the knife will prevent it from being used as a stabbing weapon, but it is apparently sharp enough to geld an entire nation.

Obama Got His 3:00 AM Call...

and refused to pick up the phone:

The White House has not issued a statement expressing support for the protestors declaring the election illegitimate. But neither has anyone in the Obama administration said a public word accepting the legitimacy of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's reelection.

"We're reacting to concrete facts," a White House official tells ABC News. "We're collecting them still."

Via Hot Air.

National Organization for

Talk show host David Letterman won't apologize for suggesting the statutory rape of Sarah Palin's 14-year-old daughter Willow, beyond a half-ass attempt to claim that the rape of 18-year-old Bristol Palin was his actual intention.

I have peers in the blogosphere that would like to see the aging hack boycotted and fired for his comments... I don't see the effort being worthwhile. Letterman's sagging rating would only be buoyed by continuing to low-boil the saga, and his fellow liberals—the real problem—would only support him more in political solidarity by assigning more relevance to him than a late night talk show host with a worn-out and increasingly bitter schtick is worth.

But the biggest argument against boycotting Letterman is that he simply isn't that big a fish. If people who are disgusted by Letterman's misogyny really want to make a difference, they'll target those that do the most in allowing the degradation of women.

They can do no worse than starting with the National Organization for Women.

NOW was silent about Letterman's advocacy of statutory rape until they were forced to speak. Ignoring women's issues that are not politically advantageous for the organization has been NOW's most defining characteristic since the Clinton era. If women are abused by Democrats—especially liberal Democrats—then NOW has little or nothing to say unless pushed out on stage like a recalcitrant four-grader. Even then, ideologically battered, they never take a more forceful stand than they absolutely must, and then they quickly retreat.

Like liberal abusers of women, Muslims don't exist in NOW's universe. Though their women have few if any rights, and can be beaten or slaughtered under sharia law for vague offenses to the honor of a savage and often primitive culture, NOW simply prefers to pretend the problem doesn't exist. The fierce urgency of NOW no longer even pretends to represent all women. It protects only the ideology of liberal women... and only when they aren't being attacked by useful liberal men.

No, it seems that the primary goal of NOW—and other left wing organizations—is to demand conformity from those they claim to represent, not liberty or independence. They exist to best serve themselves, like the government they champion.

This world would be a lot better off if there actually was an organization that cared about the rights of all women, and who had the courage to stand against brutally and abuse, and for equality, no matter where it originated.

But it certainly isn't NOW, who can't even stand up against a bitter old comedian that thinks that the public statutory rape of a 14-year-old girl makes for a great punchline.

Krugman's Article on Andrew Mickel

It seems the sage of the New York Times has deemed to weigh in on the dangers of right wing extremism.

I'm sure his column on the dangers of left wing extremism highlighting Indymedia's Death Row representative Andrew Mickel will be even more thorough, since he's had years to work on it.

More here.

White Supremacist Attacks Holocaust Museum; Guard Killed, Shooter in Critical Condition

Left wing blogosphere filled with smug satisfaction.

By now I'm sure you have heard the news that 88-year-old white supremacist James W. von Brunn attacked the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC today. Security officer Stephen Tyrone Johns died confronting Brunn, who was in turn struck down by return fire from another security officer. Because of the professionalism and quick response from the Museum's security team, no patrons were injured in the attack.

I'd ask you to please consider praying for the Johns family and the soul of Officer Johns, who gave his life protecting his fellow citizens.

Sadly, and with tedious predictability, opportunistic left-wing bloggers triumphantly rushed to use the attack as a political bludgeon.

Taylor Marsh's response was typical, proclaiming the attack as vindication for a shoddily-written document released by the Department of Homeland Security and initially defended by DHS Janet Napolitano before she was forced to retract it in embarrassment.

Marsh began gloating before Officer Johns was even cold:

We have a real escalation of domestic terrorism unfolding in the United States. Something Janet Napolitano warned about in her homeland security report, for which Republicans eviscerated her. She was ringing the warning bell, which as we've seen lately was fully warranted.

Of course, Marsh's hopeful vindication of Napolitano is based upon wishful thinking, and bears little resemblance to reality.

The DHS report was panned—and later withdrawn—because the report was heavily political in nature, unfairly tarring a broad set of conservative and libertarian values as being indicators of terrorist intentions, as exposed by Roger Hedgecock and Stephen Gordon, who cited offending passages including this one:

Rightwing extremism in the United States can be broadly divided into those groups, movements, and adherents that are primarily hate-oriented (based on hatred of particular religious, racial or ethnic groups), and those that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely. It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration.

It was the broad generalization of this report that earned it criticism, for casting a net so wide that it ensnared Americans with patently mainstream ideas, such as thinking that the government exists to serve the people, or that a government needs to control its borders and favor its citizens over illegal aliens, or for believing that Constitutional Amendments are actually important.

The report cast a net broad enough that it encompassed both museum shooter von Brunn and infanticide doctor killer Scott Roeder. It was also broad enough that it would include almost every adherent of a mainstream religion, a significant portion of Congress, most of middle America, the entire Border Patrol, and the father of the 35th President, just to name a few.

Broad incompetence is not something to crow victoriously about as if were a virtue.

Except, perhaps, for certain apologists for incompetence.

38 Injured, Two Dead, One Missing in Garner, NC ConAgra Blast

A fire at a nearby ConAgra plant led to explosions late yesterday morning that collapsed large sections of the building's roof and caused an ammonia leak that was responsible for a large number of the injuries. Two bodies have been located within the wreckage of the building, but rescuers were forced to abandon overnight recovery efforts because of intense lightning and heavy rains as violent thunderstorms passed through the area. Another person is listed as missing.

Someone had called the plant over the course of the preceding weekend and threatened to start a fire, but authorities are officially downplaying the possibility of arson at this time.

Please say a prayer for the victims of this tragedy and the their families, and also for the first responders and search teams who risked their own lives to save others.

Tomorrow Belongs To Me: Obama Administration Claims They Are Above The Law

Hope and chains:

The Obama Administration argued Monday that no court, including the Supreme Court, has the authority to hear a challenge by Indiana benefit plans to the role the U.S. Treasury played in the Chrysler rescue, including the use of "bailout" (TARP) funds. The Indiana debt holders, U.S. Solicitor General Elena Kagan wrote, simply have no right to raise that issue, thus putting it out of the reach of the courts.

Once again, the leftists who cried about the rise of fascism and the police state during the Bush Administration lay strangely silent as Dear Leader's minions attempt to claim powers not remotely theirs to claim under the Constitution. Government lawyers are so full of themselves that one labeled the pension fundlawyer acting on behalf of his clients as a "terrorist."

Luckily Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg didn't agree with the Administration's challenge to the court system's authority, and issued a temporary stay, halting what may be an illegal shotgun marriage being pushed by the President's team despite ominous warnings that Fiat itself may not be financially stable enough for the deal:

The Obama administration rushed an alliance between Chrysler LLC and Fiat SpA despite Chrysler's worries about Fiat's financial health and its willingness to share technology, according to internal company emails.

The emails show Fiat ignoring requests for documents and trying to change contract terms late in the talks. A Chrysler adviser at one point said the deal risked looking as if the U.S. auto maker and the Treasury Department, which helped broker the pact, were "in bed with a shady partner." In another note, an official referred to the Treasury Department as "God."

The Obama Administration is following a common path to tyranny, claiming the extraordinary temporary need of emergency powers to forestall a catastrophe.

Emergency "needs" cascade from one crisis into another, power is usurped, until the people are the servants of the government instead of the government serving the citizens. It is at this point of social realization that creeping tyranny is finally forcefully challenged, or people are crushed under the boot of a police state.

I wonder how often these would-be tyrants can be thwarted, however, by simply refusing to give in to their hysteria.

How much better off this nation would be right now if a few Democrats had the maturity to stand up against the massive $787 billion stimulus bill that not one of them read, or the leviathan of a federal budget seemingly designed with the express purpose of bankrupting the nation.

Obama's Administration cries for now-more-faster at a breakneck pace, never intending on giving Congress or the courts time to think about what they are trying to force down the throat of American citizens.

Barack Obama doesn't want to give Americans the time to think about what he is doing.

He wants them rocked back on their heels, weak and defensive, so he can push through bills, orders, and demands that would never stand a chance of passing upon reasoned reflection.

You've been had. Hoodwinked. Bamboozled Led astray. Run amok.

This is what He does....

Update: SCOTUS punts. Here comes Enron with biscotti.

The NC State War Heats Up

Emails released by North Carolina State University show that former North Carolian governor Mike Easley (D) was involved in his wife's hiring at the University.

NCSU's Chancellor James Oblinger resigned earlier today, the latest casualty in a string of resignations that resulted from Mary Easley's hiring in 2005 and her promotion and a substantial 88% pay raise, even though it seems no one has been able to precisely pin down what she did to merit the increase.

Breaking news is that Mary Easley, who refused to resign, has just been fired by the University.

We shoudl have seen this coming. After all, she has Blago's hair...

More as this develops...

Update: As a friend noted via IM, Easley's saga sounds eerily familar like that of someone with a slightly higher profile, who got a substantial raise after her husband secured a million-dollar earmark for her employer.

Where is the media in investigating that potential scandal?

"I Did Not Vote to Lower My Standard of Living"

Michael Jones of PoliGazette voted twice for Barack Obama last year—in the primaries and in the general election—but he is one of a rapidly growing number of disillusioned moderates that is coming to regret his decision.

Here is a taste of his discontent:

Like many Americans last November, I voted for change. I had hope. I no longer have hope since the president I voted for never mentioned a fraction of the agenda he now espouses. I did not vote to lower my standard of living, humble as it may be. Nor did I ask to jump into the economic abyss in order to "save" the planet.

Every time I hear another Obama supporter-turned-opponent claim that they had no idea what Obama was going to do as President, I have to shake my head in amusement.

If these new critics had relied upon the media, peer pressure, and party allegiance to help them decide how to cast their vote, then I can certainly understand how they ended up voting for Obama. The neophyte from Chicago certainly looked good, was charismatic, and said all the right things, while giving them the added bonus of being a (partially) African-American candidate that could help them wash away any guilt they may have of their own bigotry (we all prejudiced to varying degrees, and anyone who tells you they are completely unprejudiced is a liar and/or a dunce). For people not willing to put in the time to actively research a candidate's record or positions—which, let's face it, is most voters—he represented a package that was hard not to vote for.

I make no excuses at all for the pundit class, however. The Christopher Buckleys and Peggy Noonans of this world earn their living by (presumably) researching voting records and positions on issues both major and obscure, investigating ties to organizations and individuals of questionable propriety, and forecasting, to the very best of their ability, what a candidate might do if elected to the office.

The amateur pundit class—bloggers, for the most part—fired dozens of warning flares about significant issues with Obama's record, his dubious activities working of the board of radical charities, his lack of political courage or accountability, his strong biases, his temperament, his alleged affair, and his verified multi-decade associations with not one, or two, or three, but four hardcore radicals on the fringes of society, from a Catholic priest the advocates lynching, to a racialist church and it's radical pastor, to a pair of domestic terrorists, one of which already did jail time for obstruction of justice in a armored car robbery that left police officers and security guards dead, and who masterminded at least three politically-motivated mass murder attempts that (thankfully) all failed because of their associate's incompetence.

The punditry had every reason to sound the alarm on any of a dozen warning signs that Barack Obama was going to ruin our relationship with our allies, be a patsy for our enemies, be soft of terrorism, and preternaturally lethal to our economy and way of life. He's proven to be exactly what we expected... if anything, he's worse than we ever could have feared.

I'm glad to have Michael and others like him join the legions of us who knew Barack Obama was a dangerous choice for President, one who advocates policies that threaten the very core of the capitalist Republic.

I simply wish they had come to that realization prior to November 4.

Then and Now

Evan Thomas, 2007, "...our job is to bash the President..."

Evan Thomas, 2009, "...he's sort of a God."

h/t reader SmithRoz

Obama: Creating the Next Enron?

This doesn't look good.

It becomes readily more apparent every day that the far left shriekers of the Huffington Post, Daily Kos, and Raw Story never really worried about tyrannical fascism arising in this nation. They're real concern is that it might not happen when they were in power. Now that President Obama has unilaterally granted himself far more power than Bush and Cheney ever dreamed of, the same people who worried about a police state are sitting merrily at home without so much as a whimper... shining their badges.

Newsweek Editor Fellates God-President

Evan Thomas of Newsweek has exposed himself as being unable to hold the remotest objectivity needed to function as the editor of a news publication, declaring his unseemly and frankly creepy admiration of the President while simultaneously denigrating America:

Well, we were the good guys in 1984, it felt that way. It hasn't felt that way in recent years. So Obama's had, really, a different task We're seen too often as the bad guys. And he – he has a very different job from – Reagan was all about America, and you talked about it. Obama is 'we are above that now.' We're not just parochial, we're not just chauvinistic, we're not just provincial. We stand for something – I mean in a way Obama's standing above the country, above – above the world, he's sort of God.

Michelle Obama would LOL at this crap, and she married the man.

It is no secret that Newsweek long ago forfeited any claim to being an objective source of news, but this latest fanboy worship by Evan Thomas is simply shameful. It shatters any illusion that the magazine is capable of being anything other than an Obama propaganda device, and that Thomas is dangerously too biased to serve as a a competent and objective editor.

Newsweek is losing money and purposefully retargeting to lose even more. If their goal is make their employees radioactive while bankrupting themselves, I'd say that Thomas is doing exactly what they need.

Update: The Anchoress aims higher—literally— and suggests a higher oral interface between the President and a media latching on to his man-teats.

D-Day +65 Years

65 years ago today, brave, scared men on spray-drenched landing craft saw their landing ramps drop on the Normandy coast, and they charged out into German artillery and machine gun fire in the largest amphibious invasion in history, daring to take Hitler's Fortress Europe. They joined thousands of paratroopers and glider-borne infantry that has slipped in the night before under the cover of darkness.

Today, we pause to remember those brave men of the Allied Expeditionary Forces who risked—and in many cases died—in a bid to take back Europe from the forces of fascism.

I can do no better than direct you to Blackfive's excellent tribute, A Struggle to Preserve Our Republic, and repost the following:

"Be Seated."

"Men, this stuff we hear about America wanting to stay out of the war, not wanting to fight, is a lot of bullshit. Americans love to fight - traditionally. All real Americans love the sting and clash of battle. When you were kids, you all admired the champion marble player; the fastest runner; the big league ball players; the toughest boxers. Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Americans despise cowards. Americans play to win - all the time. I wouldn't give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed. That's why Americans have never lost, not ever will lose a war, for the very thought of losing is hateful to an American."

"You are not all going to die. Only two percent of you here today would die in a major battle. Death must not be feared. Every man is frightened at first in battle. If he says he isn't, he's a goddamn liar. Some men are cowards, yes! But they fight just the same, or get the hell shamed out of them watching men who do fight who are just as scared. The real hero is the man who fights even though he is scared. Some get over their fright in a minute under fire, some take an hour. For some it takes days. But the real man never lets fear of death overpower his honor, his sense of duty to this country and his innate manhood."

"All through your army career you men have bitched about "This chickenshit drilling." That is all for a purpose. Drilling and discipline must be maintained in any army if for only one reason -- INSTANT OBEDIENCE TO ORDERS AND TO CREATE CONSTANT ALERTNESS. I don't give a damn for a man who is not always on his toes. You men are veterans or you wouldn't be here. You are ready. A man to continue breathing must be alert at all times. If not, sometime a German son-of-a-bitch will sneak up behind him and beat him to death with a sock full of shit."

"There are 400 neatly marked graves somewhere in Sicily all because one man went to sleep on his job -- but they were German graves for we caught the bastard asleep before his officers did. An Army is a team. Lives, sleeps, eats, fights as a team. This individual heroic stuff is a lot of crap. The bilious bastards who wrote that kind of stuff for the Saturday Evening Post don't know any more about real fighting, under fire, than they do about fucking. We have the best food, the finest equipment, the best spirit and the best fighting men in the world. Why, by God, I actually pity these poor sons-of-bitches we are going up against. By God, I do!"

"My men don't surrender. I don't want to hear of any soldier under my command being captured unless he is hit. Even if you are hit, you can still fight. That's not just bullshit, either. The kind of man I want under me is like the lieutenant in Libya, who, with a Lugar against his chest, jerked off his helmet, swept the gun aside with one hand and busted hell out of the Boche with the helmet. Then he jumped on the gun and went out and killed another German: All this with a bullet through his lung. That's a man for you."

"All real heroes are not story book combat fighters either. Every man in the army plays a vital part. Every little job is essential. Don't ever let down, thinking your role is unimportant. Every man has a job to do. Every man is a link in the great chain. What if every truck driver decided that he didn't like the whine of the shells overhead, turned yellow and jumped headlong into the ditch? He could say to himself, "They won't miss me -- just one in thousands." What if every man said that? Where in hell would we be now? No, thank God, Americans don't say that! Every man does his job; every man serves the whole. Every department, every unit, is important to the vast scheme of things. The Ordnance men are needed to supply the guns, the Quartermaster to bring up the food and clothes to us -- for where we're going there isn't a hell of a lot to steal. Every last man in the mess hall, even the one who heats the water to keep us from getting the GI shits has a job to do. Even the chaplain is important, for if we get killed and if he is not there to bury us we'd all go to hell."

"Each man must not only think of himself, but of his buddy fighting beside him. We don't want yellow cowards in this army. They should all be killed off like flies. If not they will go back home after the war and breed more cowards. The brave men will breed brave men. Kill off the goddamn cowards and we'll have a nation of brave men."

"One of the bravest men I ever saw in the African campaign was the fellow I saw on top of a telegraph pole in the midst of furious fire while we were plowing toward Tunis. I stopped and asked what the hell he was doing up there at that time. He answered, "Fixing the wire, sir." "Isn't it a little unhealthy right now?," I asked. "Yes sir, but this goddamn wire's got to be fixed." There was a real soldier. There was a man who devoted all he had to his duty, no matter how great the odds, no matter how seemingly insignificant his duty might appear at the time."

"You should have seen those trucks on the road to Gabes. The drivers were magnificent. All day and all night they rolled over those son-of-a-bitching roads, never stopping, never faltering from their course, with shells bursting around them all the time. We got through on good old American guts. Many of these men drove over forty consecutive hours. These weren't combat men. But they were soldiers with a job to do. They did it -- and in a whale of a way they did it. They were part of a team. Without them the fight would have been lost. All the links in the chain pulled together and that chain became unbreakable."

"Don't forget, you don't know I'm here. No word of the fact is to be mentioned in any letters. The world is not supposed to know what the hell became of me. I'm not supposed to be commanding this Army. I'm not even supposed to be in England. Let the first bastards to find out be the goddamn Germans. Someday I want them to raise up on their hind legs and howl, 'Jesus Christ, it's the goddamn Third Army and that son-of-a-bitch Patton again.'"

"We want to get the hell over there. We want to get over there and clear the goddamn thing up. You can't win a war lying down. The quicker we clean up this goddamn mess, the quicker we can take a jaunt against the purple pissing Japs an clean their nest out too, before the Marines get all the goddamn credit."

"Sure, we all want to be home. We want this thing over with. The quickest way to get it over is to get the bastards. The quicker they are whipped, the quicker we go home. The shortest way home is through Berlin. When a man is lying in a shell hole, if he just stays there all day, a Boche will get him eventually, and the hell with that idea. The hell with taking it. My men don't dig foxholes. I don't want them to. Foxholes only slow up an offensive. Keep moving. And don't give the enemy time to dig one. We'll win this war but we'll win it only by fighting and by showing the Germans we've got more guts than they have."

"There is one great thing you men will all be able to say when you go home. You may thank God for it. Thank God, that at least, thirty years from now, when you are sitting around the fireside with your grandson on your knees, and he asks you what you did in the great war, you won't have to cough and say, 'I shoveled shit in Louisiana.' No, Sir, you can look him straight in the eye and say, 'Son, your Granddaddy rode with the Great Third Army and a Son-of-a-Goddamned-Bitch named George Patton!'"

"That is all."

Obama's Approval Plummets

Did you ever wonder how long an ideologue recycling old philosophies would be able to pull one over on the American electorate after taking power, even if the media was doing their best to champion him as the best think since sliced bread? Well, we have an answer.

About four months.

As jobs continue to be lost despite media reporting designed to disguise the truth, we may be seeing America's love affair with Hope and Change dying just months into a new Presidency.

But why is that?

While there are books that can (and no doubt will) be written about this recession and Obama's role in mismanaging it, we don't need the hindsight of history to know simple economics. You can't spend your way out of debt. Spending more when you're already in debt simply gets you deeper in debt. My nine-year-old gets this.

My President does not.

America is coming to grips with the fact our President is far out of his depth. He's a gifted orator, but speeches are not solutions.

He had no solutions. He has rhetoric.

He also has a sincere, irrational belief that more government involvement is the solution to almost any problem. But as almost everyone else knows, all government does in inhibit progress and retard growth with bureaucracy and inefficiency.

The number one domestic threat to the United States at this moment is a President that thinks government is the solution instead of the problem.

The polls are finally beginning to reflect that fact.

ABC NEWS: Alien Armada Targets President For Death!

Barack Obama's cascade of economic and foreign policy gaffes are apparently so great that aliens from other planets are threatening to have him killed:

Murray then said "We are on a mission to kill the president of the United States," according to the complaint.

Murray told the teller during that visit, the complaint added, "We are 94 million miles from the sun, and are in-between the sun and moon, and the eagle that flies between them, and it's a giant step for mankind. ... I have traveled thousands of miles to be here and know things that are going to happen. ... The banking system will fail and people will die. ... There will be chaos in the world."

What's worse is that the Secret Service has confirmed that Murray is just one of a vast alien conspiracy that desires to assassinate the President:

"This is one of a gazillion cases," the spokesman told ABC News. "It's not that out of the ordinary. We see this day in and day out."

A gazillion. Wow.

This strongly suggests that our President may be not just the most incompetent leader on this planet, but also the closest thing to Zaphod Beeblebrox in this and surrounding galaxies.

For those of you unfamiliar with Beeblebrox, he was, for a short time, the President of the Galaxy which was according to Wikipedia's summary, "(a role that involves no power whatsoever, and merely requires the incumbent to attract attention so no one wonders who's really in charge, which is a role Zaphod was perfectly suited for)."

Through a colossal accounting error known as the 2008 Presidential Election, Barack Obama was selected to the same assignment, traveling around making inane speeches that inflame allies and encourage our enemies while making humiliating protocol errors like giving foreign heads of state tawdry department store gifts that don't work.

So either Barack Obama is a such a dangerously incompetent leader that the entire galaxy wants him offed, or a fawning media is looking for any chance at all to whip up hysteria by making famous each and every crank they hear about.

I wonder which it is.

Beware Flying Alter Boys

Swiped shamelessly from Rachel Lucas, who got it from AP at Hot Air.

Great Moments in Parenting

A five-year-old kindergarten student was found with a handgun at my child's elementary school (name removed) in Raleigh, NC today. Don't bother to check the news, as that information hasn't been released to media outlets, just sent out as a phone alert to the parents of students, who are—at least at this moment—unaware of the prepubescent gunmen in their midst.

We were assured that the gun they recovered was unloaded, and from the moment it was discovered, that no student saw or touched it. Would that make you feel better if it was your child's school? Frankly, the seeing it isn't what concerns me.

I'm all in favor of having guns in schools. I think concealed carry permit holders should be allowed on college campuses as faculty, staff, and students, and would feel comfortable—actually, more comfortable—if I knew that public school faculty and administrators were empowered to act as a last line of defense against prospective school shooters.

But I also know you must always treat all guns as being loaded weapons all the time, and you simply cannot put them where children and irresponsible adults in your home can access them. Owning a firearm is a right, but it is also a serious responsibility.

Wake County law enforcement is dealing with the child, and his family.

I'm simply thankful that this time around no one is having to deal with the coroner.

Bill Killed

David Carradine, dead at 72.

A Brilliant Delusion

In a stirring address in Cairo, Egypt, a U.S. President confirmed that he saw the world as he would have it be, and not as it was.

In rhetoric that bared a broad range of thought, from empathy and denial, to wishful thinking and sophomoric ideological fantasy, Barack Obama alarmed allies and confirmed for the nation's enemies that he will do for democracy and the advancement of human rights what George Tiller did for pediatrics.

By all means, go through Obama's Cairo speech... and you tell me how "reality-based" our dorm room Marxist President really is.

He promises common ground with countries that harbor cultures who long ago declared holy war against us...

Well, they have an idea of acceptable common ground as well.

And I wish he'd stop trying so hard to find it again in his drive for appeasement at any price.

Most Brilliant President Evah Declares United States is a Muslim Country

Jake Tapper has discovered that the Administration is now comfortable referencing President Obama's Muslim roots.

I count myself as an Obama critic for many reasons, but I've consistently defended the President's school record even as he attempted to minimize the public's view of his exposure to Islam. He felt—accurately—that there are a lot of religious bigots in this country that would not vote for a Muslim for President, and I'd be shocked if his own internal polling during the election didn't reflect across the board including minority voters as well, especially African-American Baptist congregations in the South and heavily Catholic Latino communities around the country.

Quite frankly, if Barack Obama had not made strong efforts to quash his early ties to Islam as much as possible, there is little reason to suspect that a post-9/11 America would have elected him President.

But the election has been over for months, and through sleight of hand, empty platitudes to be all things to all people, and an utter failure of an adoring media to do even the most basic vetting of the candidate, we've been provided with an inexperienced, pretty President that no one knows anything about.

So perhaps we shouldn't be all that shocked when an un-vetted Obama Administration starts playing up the President's Muslim roots when it becomes convenient to do so, nor should the media feign shock when they did nothing to test the veracity of his earlier downplaying of the same.

Nor should we be surprised by the President's less-than-brilliant performance as a leader, considering the fact he's never held an executive position and America selected him to be a POTUS with training wheels. He has his ideology, if not a grasp of the facts... or economics... or protocol... or foreign policy... or....

Well, you get the idea.

So I'm not surprised when a neophyte President still trapped in dorm-room university Marxism proclaims obvious stupidities and outright lies, like claiming he has "saved or created" jobs when he has been killing them hand-over-fist, or that he is President of 57 states, or that those 57 states just became Muslim overnight.

He is who you elected, America.

And you deserve every second of his Presidency.

An Ideologue's World

The flash was blinding and disorienting, and Hassan dropped to his knees as a roar like the end of the world shook the ground under him. The sky over Jericho dimmed and he turned west to see a mushroom cloud rising above Tel Aviv... or where Tel Aviv once was.

"The Shia have killed us all," he whispered, and he sat down to die.

For now, this vision of the end of the Cradle of Civilization— the realization of the so-called Samson option by a dying Israel in response to an Iranian nuclear strike —is fiction.

Our President, however, seems unwilling to take repeated Iranian threats to destroy Israel at face value, just as he ignores that nation's continued development of long-range missiles and nuclear warheads.

He pretends to believe that Iran has a need or desire for peaceful nuclear energy instead of the beginning of Armageddon. His is a childish belief of a man who has never been a leader but has always been an ideologue in a political movement cowed by an irrational and suicidal belief of moral equivalence between good and evil when it admits that they even exist at all. He says we cannot impose our values—life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—on nations with murderous histories and hate-consumed cultures.

Better to let them live out their fantasies of genocide, no matter how many millions die, than be a man who has to make difficult decisions.

Where King's Bill Would Have Failed

Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, the American Muslim convert that shot two local soldiers outside of a Little Rock military recruiting station, was on a FBI watch list after all, not that it did any good:

The suspect arrested in the fatal shooting of one soldier and the critical injury of another at a Little Rock, Ark., Army recruiting booth today was under investigation by the FBI's Joint Terrorist Task Force since his return from Yemen, ABC News has learned.

...

Officers who searched the car found more than 100 rounds of ammunition, an SKS assault rifle, two pistols, and two military books.

The ammunition was loaded in magazines which were found in a vest, police sources say.

You can expect at least lip service for Peter King's H.R.2159: Denying Firearms and Explosives to Dangerous Terrorists Act of 2009 to pick up steam in the wake of the Little Rock attack that killed soldier William Long and the killing of an infanticide specialist in a Wichita church the day before.

Denying terrorists the means by which to carry out their attacks is something we can all get behind on both sides, but I can't find anything in King's bill to suggest that Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad or Scott Roeder would have been effectively denied access to firearms even if King's proposed bill was already established law.

Roeder's Freemen fringe is known to be well-armed and not prone to having any respect for federal laws—indeed, the defining characteristic of this and similar groups is that they do not respect federal authority—and I rather doubt King's proposed law would be the one they decided to follow.

Likewise, Muhammad could easily obtain arms via other, non-legal means.

As it stands, I haven't seen law enforcement or media reports that established how either of these domestic terrorists obtained their firearm. That said, we do know that another law, however well-intentioned, would not have been the slightest impediment to these killers.

African-American Muslim Convert Guns Down Two Soldiers at Little Rock Recruiting Station

The political apparatus behind Homeland Security is obviously not tracking the right extremists:

A Muslim convert who said he was opposed to the U.S. military shot two soldiers outside an Arkansas recruiting station, killing one of the soldiers, police said Monday.

"This individual appears to have been upset with the military, the Army in particular, and that's why he did what he did," Little Rock Police Lt. Terry Hastings said in a phone interview.

"He has converted to Muslim here in the past few years," Hastings said. "To be honest we're not completely clear on what he was upset about. He had never been in the military."

Hastings identified the man in custody as Carlos Bledsoe, 24, of Little Rock, who was going by the name of Abdul Hakim Mujahid Muhammad.

It seems like it was just within the past few weeks—because it was—that another group of African-American Muslim converts attempted to carry out terrorist attacks against American citizens.

Has anyone heard of Homeland Security or the Justice Department issuing warnings to law enforcement agencies to be looking for signs of suspicious activity from this very specific pool of potential terrorists? Before they struck twice in the past two weeks, I mean.

I'd love to hear from those of you in law enforcement if such a warning had been issued.

I'd hate to think that our current Presidential Administration would rather ignore the uncomfortable realities of real terrorist threats in favor of playing to the comforting silence of identity politics... but considering President Obama's ties to certain terrorists/authors and the 20 years he spent in the congregation of a racial separatist church, I wouldn't put it past Dear Leader, either.

The Left Gets Their Andrew Mickel to Celebrate

Via Little Green Footballs, it seems that the suspect arrested in the murder of infanticide specialist George Tiller may be one Scott Roeder.

Charles notes that someone posting under that name has posted at the Web sites of several anti-abortion groups, and that he may be the same Scott Roeder that belongs to several extremist groups on the far right fringe, including the Sovereign Citizen movement, the Freeman, and perhaps the Christian Identity movement. If so, Roeder is far outside the mainstream of American thought, as was his analog, Andrew Mickel.

Those of you familiar with this site know that I've referred to Mickel on several occasions in the past precisely because he is an excellent whipping boy that showcases the extremism that can come from far leftist ideologies. He and Roeder may very well be mirror images of the same sort of extremist-prone mindset that seeks to become a malevolent force.

There are some of us in the center-right blogosphere who came down heavily on Mickel for his politically-motivated assassination of an innocent police officer, but the national media largely ignored Mickel's conviction in a death penalty case, probably because of the fact that they helped shape the terrorist he became, and because he was a living example of the worst extreme of their ideology.

Now that a man identified as Roeder has murdered infanticide specialist George Tiller, the media finally has a politically motivated assassination it can get behind and hype. They will try to portray as some sort of representative example of a much wider group, just as noted conspiracy theorist Andrew Sullivan reflexively did, even though the last murder of an abortionist occurred more than a decade ago.

As I noted earlier, nobody gains from such politically-motivated murders, and I can only wonder how the powers that be will try to use this tragedy to their advantage.

Provided they don't get someone else killed first.

When You've Lost the Shrieking Radical Cartoonists, You've Lost Them All

Barack Obama seems to be losing the far left wing of his support, as evidenced by pressure from the left wing blogosphere on a number of issues and most recently, a rant from bigoted cartoonist Ted Rall.

Pardon me, but didn't we warn you of this before the election?

Obama is useless. Worse than that, he's dangerous. Which is why, if he has any patriotism left after the thousands of meetings he has sat through with corporate contributors, blood-sucking lobbyists and corrupt politicians, he ought to step down now — before he drags us further into the abyss.

I refer here to Obama's plan for "preventive detentions." If a cop or other government official thinks you might want to commit a crime someday, you could be held in "prolonged detention." Reports in U.S. state-controlled media imply that Obama's shocking new policy would only apply to Islamic terrorists (or, in this case, wannabe Islamic terrorists, and also kinda-sorta-maybe-thinking-about-terrorism dudes). As if that made it OK.

In practice, Obama wants to let government goons snatch you, me and anyone else they deem annoying off the street.

Preventive detention is the classic defining characteristic of a military dictatorship. Because dictatorial regimes rely on fear rather than consensus, their priority is self-preservation rather than improving their people's lives. They worry obsessively over the one thing they can't control, what George Orwell called "thoughtcrime" — contempt for rulers that might someday translate to direct action.

If Rall and his peers had actually bothered to vet Obama prior to the election, instead of acting as his fluffer, then perhaps he could have avoided the nasty shock of discovering that Barack Obama is exactly what we said he would be if he won the election. America voted for a charismatic, radical orator with a well-oiled field organization and brilliant propaganda, and we got it.

Like the spoiled children they are, they don't seem willing to pay the cost for their decision.